“Victor! Where are you?” Kyle called out.
Kyle felt tightness in his throat and chest. He could hear Victor groaning and crying, but he couldn’t find him. Kyle jumped onto the counter so he could peer to the other side. There was no one in sight.
Where the fuck is he?
A lightning flash illuminated the room for a split second, giving Kyle enough time to see Victor’s head poking from around the corner.
“Victor!” Kyle yelled as he rolled to the other side of the counter and landed on his feet. He had forgotten about the dead postal worker they had destroyed earlier. Nearly slipping on the blood, Kyle began to make his way toward Victor.
Another flash lit up the room as he turned the corner. This time he got a better look at Victor’s condition. The boy was bent over an overturned chair with his hands bound around its legs. His face was severely bruised around the cheeks and his eyes were so puffy and swollen that Kyle didn’t think he could see.
“Holy shit,” Kyle said as he quickly began to loosen the rope tied around Victor’s mouth like a makeshift gag. “What the fuck hap …”
Kyle suddenly stopped moving. After loosening the ropes, Kyle noticed that Victor’s pants and underwear were missing. His rear-end pointed to the sky as if welcoming someone to have their way with it.
A tear ran down Kyle’s face as he quickly realized that his dream had been trying to tell him what was happening. The screams and cries for help he heard in his dreams had been real, they had to have been. The proof was in front of him. Victor lay strapped to a chair, bare-assed, with blood slowly leaking out and landing on the ground around him.
“Chet … Chet … Chet …” Victor slowly breathed as more tears began to run down his face.
Every bit of anger that Kyle had felt throughout his life was nowhere near the amount of anger he felt at that second. For the first time in his life, Kyle saw red glaze over his vision. He finished untying Victor, and then clutched his hand into a fist as he slowly stood from his kneeling position.
“Where did Chet go?” Kyle asked, hoping that Victor had enough in him to at least guide Kyle in the right direction.
“Stole weapons, stole keys, stole truck … stole … me.” Victor breathed through tears and whimpers.
Thoughts about where Chet could have run off to were quickly racing through Kyle’s head. The most logical answer was that Chet stole their supplies and the truck so he could either make it back to his car and fix it or load his supplies into the truck and continue on his way. But this was all in the hopes that he’d been telling them the truth.
“Stay here,” Kyle ordered, slowly helping Victor off the chair and laying him, stomach-first onto the floor.
“It hurts … it really hurts,” Victor said as he motioned his arm to his rear-end.
They didn’t have any real painkillers, only a few aspirin and Ibuprofen Kyle had kept in his pocket, but those wouldn’t be too effective on pain like this. Besides, the pills had been soaked along with Kyle’s clothes and were probably completely useless by now. Kyle knew Victor was in tremendous pain. With the amount of blood and feces on the ground he could only imagine how much of a terrible experience it was for Victor. Kyle decided to do something for the kid, something that would take the pain away, at least temporarily. He knelt down to face him. Victor slowly turned his head to see Kyle. All he could see through the puffiness of his eyes was Kyle’s massive fist flying toward his face.
Kyle put so much force into the punch that it quickly, and with as little pain as possible, knocked the boy unconscious. Victor’s body fell limp. Kyle maneuvered the boy’s face to the side and elevated it to open his airways. Using the curtains that draped over openings on the walls, Kyle covered Victor, for safety and decency.
The red in his vision had not gone away, nor did he want it to. He felt the adrenaline course through his body, making his muscles more efficient for what he was about to do. He was going to find Chet and make him pay for everything. Pay for drugging him, pay for stealing from him and pay for raping a poor defenseless boy, his poor defenseless boy.
Kyle turned to face the counter and saw a pair of scissors nestled into a dark corner near the employee work station. He grabbed them by the pointed edge and tested the sharpness by rubbing his thumb against one of the blades. Not as sharp as he would have liked, but better than nothing. He put the scissors into his back pocket and jumped over the counter.
He didn’t know how long ago Chet had left, but rain was still gushing down from the heavens. His muscles began to tense up as he thought about Eddie, Mary, Susie, Angel and Victor. Then the image of the zombified version of Chet pressing Victor against the sliding glass door and raping him right in front of Kyle snapped into his head. Anger raced through him as he sprinted for the door. He turned right down the outside pathway until he reached the parking lot. He was quickly engulfed in rain, and his vision was no more than a few feet in front of him. Looking around, Kyle began sprinting up the road as quickly as he could. There was no telling how much time he had before Chet was gone forever.
He ran for what seemed like many miles but in reality, was only about one. As he reached a sign that read Post Office one mile, with an arrow pointed in the direction he came from, the rain finally began to subside. Kyle’s vision improved as the rain ceased to be a nuisance.
Kyle did notice something as he continued running; there were no other figures on the streets besides him. He saw this as a sign of luck. He wouldn’t have to deal with the Existing Dead, and could continue on his mission of finding Chet.
As he ran, the road split into two directions. Kyle stopped, trying to catch his breath. He wasn’t sure which direction he should go, but one sign did catch his gaze: it read “Las Vegas” with a pointing arrow.
Kyle took in one last gust of air and continued running in the direction of Las Vegas. He remembered that’s where Chet said he was heading before his car stopped running.
The sound of his feet smacking onto the pavement grew louder now that the rain was no longer there to muffle the noise. He began running uphill, causing his legs to tire more quickly. As his head peeked over the small hilltop, he saw a figure roughly one-hundred yards away. The form was too far out to be recognizable, but he did recognize his Toyota pick-up truck. Two cars were parked parallel to each other on the middle of the road. The person was moving items from Kyle’s truck into a small Ford Fusion.
Kyle ducked his head and ran right toward the railings. There was plenty of trees for him to move undetected closer to Chet. Kyle took the scissors out of his back pocket and slowly began to walk through the green toward the inhuman monster.
He moved quickly and quietly, trying very hard to not be seen or heard. He wanted the element of surprise to work in his favor. Not that he needed it. Chet didn’t look like he had any weapons on his body.
Kyle was finally a few yards away, and Chet still did not know that he was being stalked. The pedophile picked the robot backpack out of the truck and tossed it into his car. Kyle watched and waited for the perfect time to strike and just as if God were listening to his thoughts, the perfect time came.
From the other end of the road, four figures emerged. Their slow and jerky movements instantly told Kyle that they were Existing Dead. They were a hundred yards away, and Chet had not yet noticed them. Kyle watched as the dead slowly approached. It wasn’t until one of them moaned that Chet noticed the danger he was in.
“Ah shit,” Chet said, reaching into his car and bringing out Kyle’s Winchester. “How the fuck do you load this thing?” he asked himself, in a panic.
Chet found the shell loading compartment and then began loading it with shells from his pocket. When no more would fit, he pumped the shotgun and pointed it toward the figures.